Macon Horizons Piper PA-31-350 accident
Piper PA-31-350 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Middle Georgia Regional Airport (MCN) to Anniston Regional Airport (ANB)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL91FA052
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 4 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Charter & commuter
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-31-350
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-31
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N27818
- Operator
- Macon Horizons
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Middle Georgia Regional Airport (MCN), Macon, GATo Anniston Regional Airport (ANB), Anniston, AL
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · cruise
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Proper altitude, not maintained
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, attempted
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
DURING AN UPDATED 0528 EST WX BRIEFING, THE PILOT WAS ADVISED OF FLIGHT PRECAUTIONS FOR IFR WEATHER CONDITIONS IN THE GEORGIA AND ALABAMA AREAS. AT 0841 EST HE DEPARTED MACON, GA ON AN IFR FLIGHT PLAN TO ANNISTON, AL. AT O821 CST, APRX 22 MI SE FROM THE ANNISTON ARPT, THE PILOT CONTACTED ATLANTA CENTER AND CANCELLED HIS IFR FLIGHT PLAN. HE WAS ADVISED THAT THE MINIMUM SAFE ALTITUDE IN HIS AREA WAS 2,900 FT MSL. TWO MINUTES LATER HE CONTACTED ANNISTON RADIO AND REQUESTED LOCAL WX CONDITIONS. HE WAS GIVEN THE LATEST REPORTED (0756 CST) WX AS CEILING 1,500 BROKEN, 3,100 OVERCAST, 5 MI WITH FOG. THE ANNISTON AIRPORT FIELD ELEVATION IS 526 FT. THE AIRCRAFT SUBSEQUENTLY IMPACTED A MOUNTAIN TOP 10 MI SOUTH OF THE AIRPORT AT AN ELEVATION OF APRX 2,300 FT. THE 0850 CST ANNISTON WX WAS 800 FT OVERCAST, 4 MI IN FOG.
Probable cause
THE PILOT ATTEMPTING VISUAL FLIGHT IN INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS BELOW THE MINIMUM SAFE ALTITUDE FOR TERRAIN CLEARANCE. CONTRIBUTING FACTORS WERE THE LOW CEILING AND MOUNTAINOUS TERRAIN.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL91FA052
- Event ID
- 20001212X16400
- Case number
- ATL91FA052
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 07e93d000e09d53418f9b8f65d979b05d1d5dc26d7771bf43a75a6182fa1015c; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:04:40.014Z.